Blizzards Trivia
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61 free Blizzards trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A blizzard is not just a lot of snow. It is wind, whiteout and time, and the storms that meet the definition have rerouted history: the Great Blizzard of 1888 pushed New York to bury its wires and dig a subway, the Schoolhouse Blizzard caught Plains children walking home on a warm January afternoon, and the 1972 Iran blizzard buried whole villages under 26 feet of snow. This quiz covers the science and the stories in one place. You will meet the National Weather Service's 35 mph and quarter-mile rules, ground blizzards and whiteouts, the Freshwater Fury that sank ships across the Great Lakes in 1913, the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapse, duck hunters lost in the Armistice Day storm, Buffalo's frozen Lake Erie in 1977, the Cleveland Superbomb, Boston's Blizzard of '78 and the Beanpot, the 1993 Storm of the Century that snowed on Alabama, and the newsroom coinages Snowmageddon and Snowzilla. Easy questions suit any weather watcher; the hard ones are for people who know their millibars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on blizzards and the individual storms, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on snow and on hurricanes.
30 of 61 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A US blizzard's 35 mph wind minimum falls just short of the 39 mph threshold for what?
A tropical storm
A tropical storm begins at sustained winds of 39 mph, so a blizzard blows almost as hard. The official definition never asks how much snow falls: wind and poor visibility are what count.
Q 02To count as a blizzard in the United States, a snowstorm must cut visibility to what distance or less?
A quarter mile
A quarter mile, about 400 metres, is the limit. A storm that dumps deep snow but leaves longer views is a winter storm, not a blizzard.
Q 03What sets a 'ground blizzard' apart from an ordinary one?
No snow is falling
No snow is falling in a ground blizzard: wind simply lifts loose snow already lying on the land. That is why the Great Plains can white out under a clear sky after a storm has passed.
Q 04The Oxford English Dictionary calls 'blizzard' probably onomatopoeic and likens it to which words?
Blow, blast, blister and bluster
Blow, blast, blister and bluster are the words the OED sets beside it. As a name for snowstorms, the word swept the American press in the hard winter of 1880-81.
Q 05Which Australian explorer titled his account of an Antarctic expedition 'The Home of the Blizzard'?
Douglas Mawson
Douglas Mawson named the book for his base at Cape Denison, where gales blew almost without a break. He reached it alone after both companions on a sledging journey had died.
Q 06Which winds pour off Antarctica's ice plateau and whip up its fiercest blizzards?
Katabatic winds
Katabatic winds are cold, dense air sliding downhill under its own weight. Air chilled on the high ice sheet pours toward the coast the way water runs off a roof.
Q 07Iran's blizzard of February 1972, the deadliest on record, struck after four years of what?
Drought
Drought had gripped Iran for four years when a week of snow arrived all at once. It wiped about 200 villages off the map.
Q 08Roughly how many people died in Iran's 1972 blizzard, the deadliest on record?
4,000
About 4,000 people died. When the snow paused on 9 February, helicopter crews flew out and found smooth white drifts where villages had stood.
Q 09How deep did the snow lie in parts of southern Iran after the deadly blizzard of February 1972?
About 26 feet
About 26 feet of snow, deeper than a two-storey building is tall, lay on the worst-hit areas. It snapped telephone lines and buried trains and whole villages.
Q 10In which city did voters oust the mayor in a 1979 primary, six weeks after a blizzard left streets unplowed?
Chicago
Chicago took about 20 inches in two days and its plows fell far behind. Challenger Jane Byrne beat Mayor Michael Bilandic in the primary on 27 February and became the city's first woman mayor.
Q 11The transport gridlock of the Great Blizzard of 1888 helped inspire which piece of infrastructure?
America's first underground subway
The paralysis of elevated trains and streetcars pushed cities to put transit underground: Boston's Tremont Street Subway, America's first, opened in 1897 and New York's first underground line in 1904.
Q 12After the 1888 blizzard downed its lines, what did New York City start doing with its telegraph wires?
Burying them underground
Burying them underground was New York's answer after the storm tore down the overhead wires and cut the city off from Boston, Washington and Montreal for days.
Q 13After the 1888 blizzard, which storm next shut the New York Stock Exchange for two full days?
Q 21How was the 'mystery ship' Charles S. Price found after 1913's Great Lakes storm?
Floating upside-down
Floating upside-down off Port Huron, the ship stayed afloat for about a week, and nobody could name it. A diver finally went down to the hull and identified it.
Q 22Which city got 22 inches of snow and 79 mph winds in the 1913 storm and was paralyzed for days?
Cleveland
Cleveland took 22 inches of snow on winds of 79 mph, with streetcars stalled and power and telephone lines down for days; Duluth and Chicago were also hit as the storm crossed the lakes region.
Q 23Despite its New York-sounding name, the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 was named for a building that collapsed where?
Washington, D.C.
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy shut the exchange on 29 and 30 October 2012, as its surge flooded Lower Manhattan's streets and road tunnels. No weather had closed it for two full days in 124 years.
Q 14The Great Blizzard of 1888 paralysed the East Coast from Maine south to which bay?
Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay marked the southern edge of the paralysis. More than 400 people died, about 100 of them sailors caught at sea.
Q 15The Schoolhouse Blizzard of January 1888 was so deadly because it struck under what conditions?
Suddenly, on a mild workday
Suddenly, on a mild workday: the morning's warmth drew people out to their chores and sent children to class. Within hours the front had dropped temperatures far below zero.
Q 16Which US president publicly called a blizzard in the capital 'Snowmageddon'?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama used the word in February 2010, after the Washington Post's weather blog and its readers had given the storm that name. The storm dropped 18 to 32 inches on the region.
Q 17Nebraska teacher Minnie Freeman became a national heroine of the 1888 Schoolhouse Blizzard for doing what?
Leading her pupils to safety
Leading her pupils to safety through the blinding storm made Freeman its best-known heroine. Other teachers tried the same walk that day, and some of their pupils died.
Q 18Which explorer died on the way back from the South Pole in 1912, pinned in his tent by a blizzard?
Robert Falcon Scott
Robert Falcon Scott reached the Pole only to find that Roald Amundsen had beaten him there by about a month. On the way back the blizzard held his party in their tent for nine days as supplies ran out.
Q 19Besides 'White Hurricane' and 'Big Blow', what was the 1913 Great Lakes Storm's third nickname?
The Freshwater Fury
The Freshwater Fury joined 'White Hurricane' and 'Big Blow' as names for a blizzard with hurricane-force winds. It wrecked ships on four of the five Great Lakes.
Q 20Which Great Lake swallowed eight freighters with all hands in 1913's 'White Hurricane'?
Lake Huron
Lake Huron claimed eight big freighters and every sailor aboard them. For days afterwards the bodies of crewmen washed ashore along the Ontario coast.
Washington, D.C., lost 98 people when the flat roof of its Knickerbocker Theatre gave way under 28 inches of snow during a Saturday-night film. The collapse gave the storm its name.
Q 24Which future Second World War general led the rescue at the collapsed Knickerbocker Theatre in 1922?
Patton
George S. Patton, then an Army major, was called out to take charge of the troops digging through the wreckage. The roof's collapse had killed 98 people.
Q 25The Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 is remembered in Minnesota partly for killing large numbers of whom?
Duck hunters
Unseasonable morning warmth had drawn hundreds of duck hunters onto the Mississippi backwaters; trapped on islands and sandbars by the sudden freeze, they made up about half of Minnesota's 49 deaths.
Q 26Which famous structure did the storm system behind the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard destroy days earlier?
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed 'Galloping Gertie', twisted itself apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November 1940 as the Pacific storm that later became the Armistice Day Blizzard came ashore.
Q 27Which future NFL coach, then a 13-year-old, was caught outdoors in the Armistice Day Blizzard?
Bud Grant
Bud Grant, a 13-year-old from Superior, Wisconsin, groped through the storm to a railway line and then a gas station, where he sheltered. He later coached the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowls.
Q 28The Armistice Day Blizzard of 11 November 1940 killed more than a million of which farm animals?
Turkeys
Turkeys bound for Thanksgiving tables died of exposure in their flocks, more than a million across the Upper Midwest. The sudden cold also killed thousands of cattle.
Q 29The 1950 Great Appalachian Storm set a November record low of 3 °F in which southern city?
Atlanta
Atlanta fell to 3 °F and Birmingham to 5 °F as Arctic air poured south behind the storm. Further north its hurricane-force winds cut power to about a million customers.
Q 30Which college football rivalry was played through the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 and nicknamed the Snow Bowl?
Michigan–Ohio State
Michigan–Ohio State kicked off in Columbus in a blizzard, and the teams punted 45 times, sometimes on first down. Michigan won 9–3 without making a single first down.